Today's Object of the Week is a lonely gravestone in a Durham City playground, marking the final resting place of a Victorian clergyman whose life mixed music, controversy and tragedy. Kaitlyn Ashby looks into his story.
Tucked away in a Durham City playground sits a 150-year-old gravestone of a vicar ahead of his time, whose music provided the haunting final notes that Titanic survivors never forgot.
John Bacchus Dykes, born in 1823, was the vicar of St Oswald's Church in Durham City.
It was here that he created his tune 'Horbury' for his book 'Hymns Ancient and Modern'.
The melody was famously played by musicians on board the sinking Titanic as she took her final breath.
Rev Dr John Bacchus Dykes, vicar of St Oswald's Church in Durham and composer of more than 300 hymn tunes (Image: NEWSQUEST)
As it turned out, Dykes also had a somewhat tragic end in an East Sussex asylum.
After graduating from Cambridge University with a Bachelor of Arts in classics, the Hull-born musician was ordained as a clergyman, and moved to the North East to manage Durham Cathedral's music in 1849.
Formerly known as Precentor of Durham Cathedral, it was here, with a view overlooking the River Wear, that he wrote more than 300 hymn tunes, including writing the music for 'For Those in Peril on the Sea', the hymn of both the Royal Navy and the US Navy.
And, with a middle name like Bacchus - the Roman god of wine, debauchery and drinking - it’s not much of a surprise our vicar did things a little differently.
You see, Dykes wasn’t like other vicars.
In fact, his Anglo-Catholic practices caused a stir in the Victorian church, sparking a bitter feud that is believed to have driven him to the very grave that sits lonely in Durham’s Church Street playground.
Hidden in a Durham City playground, the gravestone of John Bacchus Dykes marks the final resting place of one of the Victorian era's most influential church musicians (Image: NEWSQUEST)
Before his death, Dykes' parish was booming and he desperately needed more support.
He was part of a controversial new wave of 'Anglo-Catholic' vicars who wanted to bring flair back to the church.
At St Oswald's in Durham, he went all out: burning fragrant incense, wearing colourful robes, and turning his back to the pews to face the altar.
Today that might seem harmless, but in the 1800s these practices were deeply problematic to his boss.
So, Bishop Charles Baring, an uncompromising evangelical, refused to grant him any assistant priests unless Dykes agreed to abandon his controversial Anglo-Catholic practices, including the wearing of colourful vestments and burning incense at the altar.
Dykes viewed this as a direct attack on his religious freedom, and his belief in "Eucharistic Truth".
He refused to back down to the Bishop.
And so, in the beginning of the end, he took Charles Baring to the High Court.
Dykes lost his case, and the crushing workload eventually sent him to the asylum, seemingly with exhaustion.
It was there that he died in 1876, and was subsequently brought home to Durham six days after his death; he was then laid to rest in what was an extension to the main parish cemetery.
A closer look at the memorial inscription dedicated to Rev Dr John Bacchus Dykes in Durham (Image: NEWSQUEST)
Dykes was buried in the same grave as his youngest daughter, Mabel, who died aged 10 from scarlet fever in 1870.
By 1966, the rest of the headstones in that extension had been removed and the former churchyard was transformed into a children's playground.
Dykes' grave was preserved and fenced off in white railings - now removed - with a special faculty granted by the Bishop of Durham allowing the historic burial ground to be converted into a play area.
Dr John Bacchus Dykes' grave after the playground was created around it in 1966 (Image: NEWSQUEST)
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However, perhaps living true to his Bacchus name, his death has a new twist.
There has since been a modern re-examination, and after a closer look at his symptoms, experts think he may actually have died from tertiary syphilis, believed to have been contracted during his Cambridge years.
A somewhat unexpected end for a vicar, whose life was spent composing some of the church's most sacred harmonies.